Maximising urban resilience using sustainable drainage systems (SuDS): Making the case for community-led urban water management

Nature-based solutions (NbS) have been adopted globally to address a range of societal and environmental issues. A significant proportion of NbS schemes are specifically designed for urban water management and fall under the umbrella of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and blue-green infrastructure (BGI). Despite being widely recognised as a preferred choice over ‘grey’ infrastructure across policy and practice, SuDS/BGI are still underused across Europe and schemes often underdeliver and underperform in relation to their full ‘multi-benefit’ potential. This viewpoint highlights why uptake is currently limited and emphasises the importance of rethinking the urban water management process. Based on key literature and a review of 499 European practice-based case studies, we highlight that there are numerous calls for meaningful community engagement and participation across the water sector, yet real-life SuDS/BGI schemes frequently do not execute this. In most cases their primary goal is to deliver flood risk benefits with either zero or ‘token’ public engagement and limited wider benefits. Based on this critique, the following questions need to be addressed: How can we deliver more from nature-based flood projects? How can we deliver desirable and liveable SuDS/BGI? How can uptake rapidly increase at a range of scales? How can we encourage greater community engagement and participation? We share our water sector perspectives on how placemaking, citizen participation, and wider urban resilience could help deliver sustainable SuDS/BGI. We argue that multiple benefits cannot be achieved by flood and drainage engineers alone. A wider angle is necessary for upscaling, and we believe communities should play a central role in various stages of SuDS/BGI projects. Placemaking, which shapes spaces to reflect community needs, has the potential to catalyse cross-sectoral working beyond urban water management, create integrated solutions which are welcomed by communities, and thus deliver urban resilience, not just flood resilience. Drawing on lessons learned from other fields including those implementing NbS elsewhere, we recommend that flexible community-led frameworks for urban water management delivery are developed and tested in a range of community settings and at various scales. Findings have the potential to influence cross-sector policies, create holistic designs, and reduce duplications.